


& we'll never grow old again--

by nikidon



Category: Lego Ninjago
Genre: Canon Compliant, Character Study, Gen, character-centric drabble sets, more tags forthcoming
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-05
Updated: 2020-07-05
Packaged: 2021-03-05 02:48:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 571
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25097116
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nikidon/pseuds/nikidon
Summary: In his early days, Zane remembers being made like glass.Or: three times Zane wonders about being alive.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 24





	& we'll never grow old again--

_**one.** _

The doctor is getting old. Zane can see it in the hunch of his back, the droop of his eyelids, by the way each day a new wrinkle appears somewhere on his face, nested into the crease by his temples or the flat of his brow. He had almost forgotten, what it meant for humans to grow old. The snowy forest was so far away from everything, save for time itself.

“Father,” he says. “You are not young anymore,” and the doctor laughs softly.

“Oh, Zane,” he replies. “You don’t have to worry. I made you, and you will never grow old.”

Zane registers the words and nods.

Later that night, when the doctor has gone to sleep, Zane stands in front of the mirror and pulls at his skin. Yearning to produce the same wrinkles, the same lines, he watches his reflection as it all snaps back, as smooth, as young, as unruffled as always. “Hah,” he breathes, watching his breath puff white into the chilled air, “disgusting.”

**two.**

In his early days, he remembers being made like glass. When he took his first steps, he wobbled and tottered, unsteady, unfamiliar, unused to gravity. When he bumped into the doctor’s lab benches, tripped and skidded his palms, he would creak and crumple slightly, the skin of his body pulled away, the metal showing underneath.

The doctor fussed and picked, each time smoothing out his crinkled fingers, the scuffs on his arms and legs. He put oil to the machine’s slow-moving joints and code into his head until he blinked one day and thought: _oh_. Oh, so this was to balance. Oh, so this was to dance. Oh, so this was to—

“Protect those _who cannot protect themselves._ This is your purpose, Zane.”

_**three.** _

He thinks often of the monastery.

No—not the one now, with the launch pads and underground caverns and secret doors. The _old_ monastery, the first one, with its dusty halls and leaky roofs and drafts in the winter, the mountain wind unforgiving and biting. The one with a thousand too many years to its name, the one with the stones in the sparring yard that stuck up a little too sharply and at the wrong angles. The one he first came to when he had no memories. Not a warrior. Not a hero. Just a wanderer with a past as pristine as the new-fallen snow. 

He wonders if, by any technicality, it can be considered his first home. It’s—it’s complicated, really, how Zane can count back his years. His memories are not linear, in any sense. That little place in the hollow of a tree, back in that snowy forest—chronologically, it is his first home. But does it really count, when he could only remember it after?

And that’s another thing—was it fair of the doctor to do that? To take away his memories with that trembling, sallowed hand? Humans are not so fickle with their time, Zane knows, humans do not forget with a single switch flipped, a chip removed. To lose all he was in that one half-second, that one button pushed—maybe it is the price he pays, for being less than human. Exchange.

He thinks of the monastery, and all the ways it was, old and drafty and creaky. He wonders if he can become like it, one day. Some thousand years old, and some lost boy's home.

**Author's Note:**

> dusted off my ao3 for this! xox to all the ninjago friends in the discord server who entertain me and my little thoughts.


End file.
